The law is meant to apply to residents living in primarily rural areas where open burning is not prohibited and refuse disposal options sometimes are in short supply.

The House proposal is meant to prevent pollution from products that can contain arsenic, carbon monoxide, benzene, styrene, lead and other substances that can cause serious health problems.

Although federal regulations prohibit the open burning of grass clippings or leaves in any municipality having a population of 7,500 or greater unless authorized by local law, there has not been a ban on other common household wastes.

The impetus for the bill was a Department of Environmental Quality proposal that all open burning of household trash be banned. The wording of the bill also states that the DEQ cannot make rules prohibiting the open burning of materials not listed in the bill. It sailed through the House 105-1. It awaits Senate deliberations.

Although the House bill deserves passage, it could be tweaked in ways that would improve it as well as improve its impact on pollution prevention and recycling.

First, it could provide some guidance for recycling or redirecting the materials that are included in the burning ban. It's easy to assume that much, if not most, of the banned materials will end up in a landfill. That means landfill space will be chewed up more quickly and pollutants really won't be kept out of the environment.

Also, the state might want to consider an outright ban on burning garbage simply because the odor of its smoke is more offensive and partially burned garbage can produce forage for rodents and other vermin.

Perhaps the greatest problem with the House bill is that it leaves the DEQ handcuffed in dealing with potential future problems by limiting the burning ban merely to a specific list of items and dictating that no more restrictions shall be applied. That means if science tells us in the future that burning some substance is more hazardous than we previously had believed, the DEQ will not be able to dictate that it should not be burned.

On balance, the House bill is a good start, but a greater dose of common sense applied to the bill in the Senate would produce a better law.

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